The State of Auckland’s Buses

A visual overview of the performance of buses in the Auckland transport network

Based on historical and real-time data, updated approximately every 30 minutes,
obtained from Auckland Transport’s public GTFS API

Real-time and historical bus data

  • Using the public GTFS API provided by Auckland Transport, we obtain …
    • GPS positions (= position on a map), and
    • the current delay (= difference between scheduled and actual arrival time at last stop)
    … for all active buses in the network.


  • Using data collected over the last 10 weeks, we can see if today is better or worse than usual

How many buses?

  • Peak periods: A morning, B school, C evening
  • The coloured areas represent the proportion
    of buses that are, from top to bottom,
    • late by more than 5 minutes
    • on time (within 5 minutes of schedule)
    • more than 5 minutes early

As of 8:00 pm today

  • 152 of 207 buses were on time
  • 27 were running more than 5 minutes late
  • 28 were more than 5 minutes early

Today vs. last 10 Sundays

  • number and percentage of buses early, ontime, or late
  • comparing average (dashed) of past Thursdays with today

This week vs. last 4 weeks

  • percentage of buses early, ontime, or late

So, just how late is late?

  • Each dot represents one vehicle’s delay at 8:04 PM
  • the bar contains 90%, 75%, and 50% of buses

Delays so far today

  • rotating the bar from the previous graph, we see how the distribution of delays has changed today

Today vs. last 10 Sundays

  • coloured lines represent the 5% and 95%, 12.5% and 87.5%, and 25% and 75% quantiles of bus delays

This week vs. last 4 weeks

  • the regions contain 90%, 75%, and 50% of buses